What is TIEE?

Welcome to Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE), a peer-reviewed web-based collection of ecological educational materials. TIEE is a resource for busy ecology faculty who are looking for new ways to reach their students, or who perhaps want to learn more about teaching and learning.

TIEE grew out of several ESA sessions about undergraduate teaching. In these meetings some faculty said that they wanted to actively involve their students more in classes, but didn’t know how. Others knew there was a great deal of good teaching information on the web but did not have the time to find it. Some experienced faculty already trying new ways to teach wanted to push themselves further. We developed TIEE as a result of all of these comments.

The three sections of the Volume — Experiments, Issues, and Teaching — are designed to meet this broad range of needs. Experiments are for lab sections of courses, and Issues can be used in lecture, lab, and for homework. All of the TIEE materials include background information on the topic addressed, instructions for students, and notes to faculty. There are many links from both Experiments and Issues to the Teaching section which includes web-based resources, essays, and tutorials.

Funding History of TIEE

CURRENT

“Enhancing Use of TIEE Through a Formative Evaluation-Practitioner Research Component” NSF-DUE-0443714 Supplement ($49,903) 1 March 2005-1 March 2006.

"Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology TIEE): Disseminating web- and CD-ROM-Based Educational Materials Through the ESA." National Science Foundation, NSF-DUE-0127388 ($499,290) 1 March 2002 to 28 February 2005.

Program Goals

TIEE is designed to meet three challenges to the reform of ecology teaching.

The Integration Challenge of Sound Science, Innovative Pedagogy, and Advanced Instructional Technology — New curricular materials must be developed that are both scientifically AND pedagogically valid and also that use innovative teaching technologies such as hypermedia and the internet.

The Dissemination Challenge — New curriculum materials must be developed that are accessible to and adaptable by a wide range of faculty in diverse institutions with limited resources using advances in technology.

The Elevate Teaching as Scholarship Challenge — Peer review is highly valued by faculty, and therefore educational activities and writings that are reviewed and published by a scientific society are much more likely to be viewed by colleagues and administrators as valuable and meritorious scholarship.

TIEE addresses these challenges through the following goals.

Goal One: The TIEE web and CD-ROM material will help ecology faculty to improve their teaching and include more inquiry, active learning, scientific thinking, collaborative group work, innovative assessment, formative evaluation, and advanced instructional technology.

The design of TIEE is built on the use of inquiry, scientific thinking, collaborative work, formative evaluation, and alternative assessment in the college classroom. TIEE shows faculty how to teach core ecological principles with these student-active approaches in both lab/field work and in lecture. Through use of educational technology and the internet, it is designed to help ecology faculty use these novel technologies to engage their students in research and conceptual understanding in ways never before possible.

Goal Two: TIEE builds upon ESA member expertise in ecology education research and reform, peer-review, and communication to better serve the teaching scholarship needs of ecology faculty.

TIEE builds on the extensive but dispersed expertise on ecological education within the ESA's 7500+ membership, including many who are leaders in higher education reform. The ESA has taken a leadership role in furthering ecological education due to its Sustainable Biosphere Initiative, Public Affairs Office, and series of ecological research "Facts Sheets," consensus documents on current "Issues in Ecology," and an edited volume of Experiments to Teach Ecology published by ESA for undergraduate biology and ecology courses. ESA also sponsors the Mellon grants for work at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (SEEDS 1997-2002). Goals of ESA's Long Range Plan include greater contribution to ecological curricula and instruction.

TIEE breaks new ground for the ESA by introducing peer-review of education submissions published as part of ESA's developing digital library (BEN, NSF NSDL #0085840).

Goal Three: TIEE will help ecology faculty create and improve peer-reviewed educational materials that can be used in reappointment and promotion files. In this way TIEE will be a catalyst for change for the culture of teaching as scholarship.

All Experiment and Issue submissions to TIEE will undergo editor and peer review. Editors will evaluate submissions and work with contributors on scientific and educational content and on technical format.

Research and Evaluation

Evaluation of TIEE's effectiveness is essential so that we better understand aspects that are valuable and what features need adjustment. Our evaluation focuses on a set of questions:

Who uses TIEE, and how?

How do users rate the scientific and pedagogical quality of TIEE materials?

In 2005, we began a "scientific teaching" research program (Teaching: Evaluation & Research). During the last few years, Handelsman et al. (2004) and others have emphasized the need for scientific teaching: the application of scientific research methodology by faculty to their own teaching. In 2005, we issued a request for applications and from this pool selected 15 faculty from a range of institutions. These faculty are systematically studying possible impacts of TIEE on their teaching by identifying measurable outcomes, such as students' ability to make figures from raw data, and are using a variety of approaches, including pre/post tests and surveys, in their studies. Replicate measurements in the same course over a semester, over several years, and across institutions can potentially result in publishable findings. Many of these faculty are presenting their work as posters at the 2006 ESA meeting.

Our hypothesis is that these "practitioner researchers" will have a deeper understanding of why the student-active approaches featured in TIEE (such as groupwork) promote increased student learning and will be more committed to their use. This can be tested in a comparative study (e.g., Feldman 1996). Future plans for TIEE include expansion of this scientific research component and the publication of results from this research in a new journal of ecological education within TIEE.

Feldman A. 1996. Enhancing the practice of physics teaching: mechanisms for the generation and sharing of knowledge and understanding in collaborative action research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 33: 513-540.

Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE) is a project of the Education and Human Resources Committee of the Ecological Society of America.
This page was originally published on 15 January 2004 and was last revised 1 August 2007.